While Lionsgate celebrates their highest grossing film ever with The Hunger Games, I’m sitting here kind of nervous about where this series will go as the second and third films are set to be released. There’s a lot to love about The Hunger Games, but it’s not a perfect film. I should say that there’s spoilers ahead.

The first half is more interesting than the actual Games, the love triangle being set up is laughable most of the time, the shakycam ruins the finale of the film and it’s quite long. However, as much as it gets wrong, it gets even more right. The problem is that I’m afraid of where this series is going to end up. I came into this film without having any knowledge of the books, which also means I’ve no idea where this series is going

I’m just worried that love triangle will take its role in the series. There’s barely a love triangle in this first film and that’s something I’m perfectly fine with. If they are gonna keep it, they will have to expand on it. Supposedly Gale’s role in the book is about equal to the film and is expanded as the series progresses, but here, it’s a joke. We’re not really given a reason to care about Gale and Katniss as a couple, and when Gale actually showed up on screen, my audience and I laughed. And the relationship between Katniss and Peeta is as much of a joke. The relationship, at least in Katniss’ eyes, really is a joke, but that doesn’t mean it has to be funny to us. The fact that Katniss didn’t tell Peeta about it being fake worries about that love can take over the franchise.

I don’t think we’ll be seeing anymore of The Hunger Games in the later films, but I’ve got a feeling we’ll still meet a bunch of kids a la those Tributes in this film. If that’s true, can they matter next time? Out of the 24 kids selected for the Games in this film, I remember four, maybe five. I lost count of those left in the Games early on. None of them matter, including Rue. Rue’s death should have hit really hard, and it sort of did, but that wasn’t because of Rue. Jennifer Lawrence carried that scene, and the last half of the movie, really.

That last worry can be brought out even further with the supporting characters, including Peeta. More specifically, people like Cinna and Haymitch, the latter of which I really enjoyed in this film. Then there’s someone like Effie, who was NEVER named in the entire film. I still have no idea what her purpose was. I’d also to see more of Caesar Flickerman, played by Stanley Tucci, who I thought was both incredibly entertaining and a good representation of the Capital’s society.

Having said that, I’ve heard rumblings of where this series ends up with political uprising. That’s what I want to see. The first half of this film was what held my interest the most and it’s because it was thought provoking. The film brings us into a world where there’s serious class warfare that, like ours, gets progressively worse the farther you get from the top. Where the Capital is ritz, glamor and the people smell like roses, District 12 is dank, gloomy and the residents smell the opposite of roses. Not only does the film show the class system, it brings up how disgusting those in the Capital really are. The Hunger Games are their Super Bowl. The Games in this film are the 74th. That means 1,679 kids have died prior to this film. That’s 1,679 dead kids that have been celebrated as sport. I want to see all of this, and more, explored further.

There’s a lot I’m really afraid of going wrong with the last two films, especially when I’ve no idea what’s to come. As long as they can deliver something close to being as good as The Hunger Games, I’ll be sufficed.